Robotic Platform

An open-source version of the challenge robot, with identical actuators, almost identical kinematics, and identical software, is described in this paper and the corresponding site. The main difference with respect to the challenge platform is that the construction of the open-source version has been simplified considerably, such that researchers will be able to build it themselves.

Please note: For this challenge all the robotic platforms will be hosted at our institute, you do not need to build your own.

Some highlights of the design (of both versions):

Hardware Design

Each finger has 3 DoF and they share a workspace, permitting complex fine-manipulation.

This design has the following qualities:

• low weight, high torque
• 1 kHz torque control and sensing
• robustness to impacts due to transparency of transmission

Software Design

The key strengths of the software framework are:

• simple user interface in Python and C++ for control at up to 1 kHz
• safety checks to prevent the robot from breaking
• synchronized history of all inputs and outputs available and can be logged